Again on speciesism, meta-post-humanism, etc. La critique dans un souterrain. I understand it is impossible to return to the negative aspects of the Aufklärung and its all-too-clear “speciesism”, political and intellectual authoritarianism, etc. Also understood that the dichotomy subjet/world is a source of illusions.
Au diable l’ontologie?
If the solution as I understand Derrida, Wolfe, Haraway, etc., is to recognize (and transform?) all forms of life into kinds of osmotic membranes, passages, or nodes for fluxes of information, that are “embedded” or “embodied”, why not go back all the way to a clear concept like that of the incarnation and redemption? How are you going to base an ethics on this neo-materialist notion of a repetition ad infinitum of information systems? Isn’t it a ready-to-wear language in its vulnerability and elasticity for the banking, insurance and bio-informatics industry? Isn’t the absence of a subject or its fluidity also a perfectly rational cover for corporations (= legal fictional persons) fundamentally interested in limiting their exposure and expenditures?
But rather, to become peregrine (like millions of workers), to dematerialize oneself for others, without preconceived limit, since the limit or the subjet lives in the jettisoning of all that was an illusion of it, and hope for the grace of a new creation, isn’t this old, familiar territory, to hearers of the Bible, gospels, Paul, Augustine?
Specieism certainly looks less appealing in view of the branching tree of life connecting bacteria, homo habilis, my mother-in-law, and myself; differences are apparent, but not essential (essentialism always has a difficult time, since it seems to be constantly in danger of begging the question in relationship to ontology.) Without meaning to fall into a strict utilitarianism, doesn’t it seem reasonable to simply see the capacity for joy and suffering in each living thing, each to its own degree and kind, and to honor that capacity to the fullest extent possible? Could we not see the various degrees of manifestation of eternity present in all forms of the same family, even while recognizing that all is wholly an outpouring of creative purpose from the Creator God?
Joy may be subjective, but there are many ways that it can be conveyed between subjects, even between subjects of very different biology.